Chiclanagir

I am going to set up a web site for renting a friend´s villa out for her and managing it. Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of especially on the personal liability side.

jdr

Make sure you get a management licence etc, remember the President who held the keys and checked the cleaners had been in for some people and got done for an running an illegal company.

accommodation-in-spain

Hi Glynis

If you are renting out and you live there I would strongly recommend taking a breakage/damage deposit of some kind. Also make sure you write up some sort of short-let contract (this can be included in your booking form) to cover yourself.

Unless you have a really large web-site it will not get far up the rankings on Google really, Yahoo is easier to crack for smaller sites. It will take at least 6 months for Google to notice it too so get the basic site on-line asap even if not finished.

Personally I would put my money into advertising on sites 'advertising' sites rather than on a site design first as this is where you will get your bookings from. A web-site will however help later to clinch bookings as guests will get a better idea of what the property is like.

Good luck and if you need any more info you can contact me at address in signature.

Hasta luego
Zoe

accommodation-in-spain

Only me again, you may find this thread useful for rentals contracts and the forum is also useful for rental advice:

http://www.laymyhat.com/forum/viewto...60c37db4b28a3d

jaldridge

I'm afraid that statement is wrong. Smaller sites are CONSIDERABLY easier to rank in Google than larger sites. A small website can rank well in Google after just 3 - 5 days. Large sites can rank well in Google within 3 - 4 weeks if done "carefully". I have many sites and all my sites big or small rank well and generate significant traffic (although the smaller ones always rank better!).

gallerie9

hi
i am going to set up a site advertising ,our gallery and art holidays any tips on how to go about it, any help would be greatfully recieved

jaldridge

I am actually half way through writing an e-book on how to rank sites well in Google quickly. Can't give away all my 3-years worth of secrets here

accommodation-in-spain

Well that does sound very interesting jaldridge (not said in a sarcastic way as I know how text can be misinterpreted), I would be very interested in your e-book and for you to pm me your site addresses.

I have two smaller sites which are ranked well by google but that was before they started the google 'sandbox' effect started e.g. taking up to 6 months to rank the sites. My new larger site took roughly 4 months to rank even though it has 100s of more pages. By ranking I mean how long it took the home page to rank first of all.

I can't really agree with you that smaller sites do just as well as larger sites though, there is no way my 5 page sites would do as well and reach as bigger audience as my 500+ page site would. A larger site will obviously be viewed more as people have more pages to rummage through and then google will see the site is interesting (as people are spending more time on it) hence why you would move up the rankings quicker.

If you ask most owners they would say that their own web-sites will get them bookings but not half as much as an advertising site. This is from personal experience of talking to lots of owners. If owners own sites got them all the bookings because they were way up the rankings then advertising sites wouldn't exist.

Advertising sites obviously have a much larger market e.g. I created a site for my apartment in La Barrosa, but I may get a booking from our larger site for someone that searched for 'holiday rentals in Isla Canela' or 'holiday rentals in Spain' and then changed their mind and decided on La Barrosa - hence why I believe these sites are the way forward. Try it yourself, type in 'costa de la luz holiday rentals' on Google.com and see how many private owners web-sites there are - none of the first page - hence my reasoning that smaller sites can't reach a high level with a broad range of search terms.

I believe that blogs are much easier to get ranked and may be worth a go as they are completely free to set up.

This is just my opinion and no offence is intended.

jaldridge

No offence taken. Let me give you a real example of how this works....

A few months ago there was an announcement that Disney would be opening up something in Maniva. Great news for us in the area. At the time I couldn't find out much information about it and neither could anyone else. So I decided to set up a one-page website on this subject to try and post regular information about Disney in Manilva...although i haven't actually kept it very up to date (it's on the to-do list )

So I set up a website http://www.disneyspain.eu which is just one page. This was back in April. Within 5 days of launiching this it was at number 4 on page 1 of Google for "disney manilva". I made a couple of tweaks and a week later it was number 1. It's only one page, ranks number 1 and gets about 20 visitors every day.

Now, if you search for that "disney manilva" term in Google, you will see that my one page site is at number 1 followed by some BIG sites, typicallyspanish.com, timesonlines.com, my own blog, etc. It even has a Google PageRank of 4 already!

Getting a small site to number 1 is very easy...you just have to follow a certain process!!

My testing has also found that small sites convert MUCH better than big sites if set out correctly. So glynis is definitely doing the right thing.

accommodation-in-spain

Now I must admit that is impressive, isn't that a blog layout though or am I wrong? Even so it is an achievement. Any tips or would I have to pay for that advice

kevray

If you search with google for "disney sites in spain" the above url does not appear in the first 3 pages, (I gave up after that), so I would suggest that its all in the name

jaldridge

I think you're missing the point here!

mikelincs

That information appears to have been exposed as a scam to get more business for the property management group mentioned in the letter according to a reply in the same paper. I did post that information in the other thread.

jdr

Sorry, must of missed that bit

ironporer

Just for curiosity- where is the villa and what type of lease are you looking for- ie weekly, monthly, yearly? We're always looking for good lodging for our vacations back to Spain.